Rating: 
Summary: Good College Text
Review: Abboud's book is as good a place to start as any in learing literary Arabic. I did not use it as a starter - I used Heywood and Nahmad - but Abboud's book goes into a lot more detail, and provides a great deal more drill material.Which is the only negative I can say about it - DON'T try to teach yourself from it. You'll get lost. Intermediate to advanced students can bravely strike out on their own with the other books in this series, which I believe was originally put out by the University of Michigan. But this book is best off undertaken as a college text for a course.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry and Dreadful
Review: Arabic has the reputation of being one of the most difficult languages in the world, and this book is one of the reasons. It is accurate, authoritative, and widely-used, but is is also very large, highly-technical, and devoid of visual stimulation. Students can (and do) spend months pouring over this material, only to be dismayed at how little of the book they have completed. In addition, the recorded material, on which many of the exercises are based, is difficult to obtain and prohibitively-priced. The book is useful as a last resort, but fortunately there are now many other better texts available.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book for the serious student
Review: Comparing this book with others of its genre, I must say that it has stood the test of time rather well. The lessons are written clearly, and are not difficult to follow on one's own. They are comprehensive, and cover as much grammar as is needed to go to quite a high level. The book can also serve as a reference volume. The accompanying tapes (which you should absolutely buy) give hours of examples of pronounciation and drill. The downside is that the book is long. (However, remember the old saying that, "Short writing makes for long reading.") Its vocabulary is not particularly helpful for general conversation. And it is not produced in a "slick" manner; specifically, its appearance is of typed rather than printed pages, and it is devoid of the graphics that many present day students like. My conclusion is that if you want a solid coverage of the grammar of Modern Standard Arabic written in an easy paced manner, and have the patience to "eat the elephant a bite at a time," this book will serve you well. If you are looking for something that will help you with conversational Arabic, or one that will keep you entertained while you are learning, then this is not the right book.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough, easy to understand, but requires some patience
Review: Comparing this book with others of its genre, I must say that it has stood the test of time rather well. The lessons are written clearly, and are not difficult to follow on one's own. They are comprehensive, and cover as much grammar as is needed to go to quite a high level. The book can also serve as a reference volume. The accompanying tapes (which you should absolutely buy) give hours of examples of pronounciation and drill. The downside is that the book is long. (However, remember the old saying that, "Short writing makes for long reading.") Its vocabulary is not particularly helpful for general conversation. And it is not produced in a "slick" manner; specifically, its appearance is of typed rather than printed pages, and it is devoid of the graphics that many present day students like. My conclusion is that if you want a solid coverage of the grammar of Modern Standard Arabic written in an easy paced manner, and have the patience to "eat the elephant a bite at a time," this book will serve you well. If you are looking for something that will help you with conversational Arabic, or one that will keep you entertained while you are learning, then this is not the right book.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible Text in Desperate Need of Revision
Review: For some ungodly reason, known only to my Arabic teachers, this has been my textbook since I began Arabic as an undergraduate in a tutorial. My professor used it when he was learning, so by God, we were going to use it too. Now as a Master's student, I am using it again. It is hideous. As I sit here revising for my final exam in this course, I have questions regarding the exercises, and there is no example for that particular question in the text! And God help you if you want to go searching through to see if you can deduce what you should be doing with that particular item. Basically, if you have a question about what to do with a particular phrase in an exercise, you're on your own, or you ask the professor. The vocabulary is totally irrelevant: does everyone need to know how to say "I am from Michigan and Lucy is from New York"? Um, no. The text is frustrating, archaic, and in desperate need of updating. It fails to have the same endorsements from the Middle East Studies Association that al-Kitaab does, and no one can quite figure out why Cambridge University Press continues to print it! The book is HORRIBLE, especially if you are a visual learner. Past experience with foreign language textbooks incorporates visual triggers (pictures); media; history; etc. Not only does Modern Standard Arabic bore students to death, but it is also a totally useless text. What do you come away with? You can't talk about yourself, or anything around you, you can only discuss politics--which makes it an Arabic coffee house in a big, obnoxious, orange book.
Rating:
Summary: Very helpful but needs updating
Review: I found the book to be very helpful. The section on the alphabet starts from the easiest letter and builds from there, hammering in the information until you know it forward and backward. The information builds, like language, and is not just thrown out to you. The book was, however, written with a typewriter and, for the writing section, by hand, and so contains a few blotches in the Arabic. With new computer technology, the book as it is written could use a better print. The book contains many exercises that are thorough and will ensure that any student will learn the material. The exercises develop a strong, gradual base of learning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I have been studying Arabic for 5 years now. When I first started, I used this book. Subsequently, I used the Georgetown Al-Kitab and the OSU study materials. Based on my experience with all these beginning books, I have been able to form an opinion of "Elementary Modern Standard Arabic". The advantages of the book are its easy structure, grammar emphasis and easy-to-understand explanations. The book covers 30 chapters/lessons. Each one of them is structured very rigidly: grammar points, new grammar sets and reading comprehension with new words from the same lesson. I find this structure of each lesson very conducive to learning and reinforcing what the student learns. The disadvantage of the book is its lack of rich vocabulary, its special focus in choice of texts for the lessons. In addition, the lack of graphics, pictures, etc makes it somewhat unengaging compared to other language books.
Rating:
Summary: Aboo Imraan's review of Elementary MSA
Review: I must be fair after reading the other reviews, and I will say this: If you want to begin to read and understand the Arabic newpaper and familiarize yourself with it's vocabulary through the English Medium then this book is your starting point, and provided you have access to Parts 2 and 3 as well to enrich that portion of your studies. The tapes that come with it are recommended to assist in comprehension. Now if you are going to purchase it to learn how to read the Quraan and Ahadeeth and texts of the Ulamaa's books then this book has my Jarh automatically! The type is soooo old that you can tell the Arabic script was done with an Arabic typewriter waay back in the 70's! It is not recommended for communication either unless you want an Arab to ask you why you are speaking like a textbook. My recommendation is to go straight to the Madeenah Grammar Books and complete the four mustaweeyaat available at the Islamic University of Madeenah's homepage.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to Digest
Review: I teach Elementary Arabic at the University of Indiana from this book. It is strict grammar translation. The material is very dry and hard for the students to comprehend. It doesn't contain much in the way of actual Arabic material. There is one short dialogue per chapter and the topic of the dialogue progresses from the University to the Office to Famous Arabic Literary figures. Using this book you would never get around to asking someone where the bathroom is or be able to talk about your family. It is best used as a grammar supplement only.
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as it appears
Review: I've tried to learn arabic many times in the past 6 years. I took few classes from various people during that time and as most people, bought many many books on arabic. This book was one of them. I guess I bought this 4years back and never looked at it because it was huge and simply could not follow. Recently, I had to teach arabic to my daughter (6 years old) and so I bought basic text books upto fourth grade. We went through most of them within a peroid of one year and I was looking at all the books that I had purchased for more information. For some reason I picked this book, opened it some where in the middle and was able to understand every bit of it. I was delighted. Now I am going throught this book page by page and couldn't be happier. This is one of the best book. For those of who who are planning to learn arabic this is my suggestion:
1) First understand letter pronounication (that will give you the confidence that you are pronouncing it correctly. I learnt this in my local mosque from native arabic speakers and from books)
2) Get yourself school textbooks (grade 1 - 3) and go through them from end to end.
3) Purchase Bilal Philips learn Arabic audio cassettes. Simply the most useful audio tapes. It is a recording of classroom teaching.
4) Read this book from end to end (you may skip writing and pronounciation)
5) You will be an arabic expert.
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